Student Movements and Social Justice: Histories and Futures
Tue, Mar 10, 2026
9:30 AM–5:00 PM
Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center. This conference is free and open to the public. Registration required.
The conference brought together organizers from university-based organizations working for free education, affordable housing, cops off campus, campus labor, accessible childcare, and other struggles, to think, strategize, and build relationships across siloed struggles and disparate geographies.
The conference featured four panels and a keynote conversation. Two panels brought together student organizers from struggles outside the US. The first looks at historical struggles, including the 1999 UNAM strike in Mexico City, Fees Must Fall in South Africa, and the 2012 Quebec student strike. The second focuses on contemporary struggles in campus organizing in Italy, Sri Lanka and the US. There was also be a panel on campus policing and abolitionist university studies, historicizing the present conjuncture. Finally, a panel on CUNY struggles from 1969 until today grounded the conference in our local surroundings at the largest urban public university in the nation. Our keynote conversation will focus on the state of Palestinian universities.
Please enjoy photos from the conference in the slideshow below.
This conference was fully open to the public, and we invited all students, faculty, staff, community organizers, and wider publics to join us. Registration here.
Coffee and light snacks were be provided, and we shared nearby lunch options for folks to gather together!
Conference Program
10:30-11:30 AM — Student Strikes and Fallist Fights: Global Student Movements in History
Speakers: Ximena Goldman, Philippe Lapointe, and Leigh-Ann Naidoo, facilitated by Robyn C. Spencer-Antoin
The conference began with a grounding in the global history of student movements. Comrades who took part in the UNAM strike in Mexico City in 1999-2000, the student strikes in Quebec in 2012, and the Fees Must Fall movement in South Africa in 2015-16. The conversation explored the relationship between campus struggles and larger social movements, questions of organizing strategy and structure.
11:45 AM-12:45 PM — Connected Struggles: Student Organizing Today
Speakers: Elia Alberci, Gabriele Legari, Jeyakumar Jathusan and Hadeeqa Arzoo Malik, facilitated by Rupal Oza
The day continued with a discussion of the state of student organizing today. We heard from comrades in multiple countries, allowing us to think across those disparate geographies about the particularities of place-based organizing and the continuities that define student movements in our current political moment.
1:45-2:45 — Sumud in the Face of Scholasticide: The Ongoing Struggle for Education in Palestine (Keynote)
Speakers: Dr. Ahmed Abu Shaban, Dr. Sundos Hammad, and Dr. Abed Takriti, facilitated by Anthony Alessandrini
Our keynote conversation featured scholars and organizers from universities across Palestine, as well as solidarity activists from abroad, including members of Isnad and the Emergency Committee of Universities in Gaza. The discussion focused on the state of Palestinian universities, including the steadfast resistance of Palestinian teachers, scholars, and students who continue to study under impossible conditions. The conversation touched on how US-based students and academics can stand in solidarity and build partnerships with Palestinian universities and the Palestinian academic community.
2:45-3:45 — Towards an Abolitionist University: From Cops Off-Campus to Collective Liberation
Speakers: Erica R. Meiners, Eli Meyerhoff, Yalile Suriel, and David C. Turner III, facilitated by Imani Wilson
The conference continued with a discussion of abolitionist organizing in the university. Scholars from collective formations such as the Cops Off Campus Research Project and Million Dollar Hoods shared their methods of studying the university’s policing apparatus and the ways that it is wielded against surrounding communities, student protesters, and union activists.
4:00-5:00 — Pedagogy and Praxis at CUNY: Building the New York Liberation School
Speakers: Vani Kannan, Jorge Matos, and Conor Tomas Reed, facilitated by Lucien Baskin
Our day concluded with a conversation rooted in the place-based struggles at the City University of New York, with particular attention to the internationalist, diasporic, and community-focused currents of CUNY movements. We dove deeply into CUNY’s expansive histories of student struggles, ethnic studies pedagogies, and feminist praxes of liberation. This panel wove together past, present, and future, as three CUNY organizers, teachers, scholars, and archivists discussed the role of movement histories in classrooms and political education spaces.
This conference is co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities; the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics (CPCP); and Scholars for Social Justice.
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